Next book

ROUTE 19 REVISITED

THE CLASH AND LONDON CALLING

Bloated and unfocused—for die-hard Clash fanatics only.

The 1979 punk classic gets a trainspotter’s treatment.

Having profiled the Clash in two editions of the group biography The Last Gang in Town, British music journalist Gray now turns his attention to the band’s most enduring album. London Calling was formulated at a critical juncture in the band’s career. The group was coming off an unfocused sophomore album and adrift without any formal management after a split with their Svengali, Bernie Rhodes. Drawing on sources that ranged through rockabilly, R&B, blues, funk, reggae and jazz, band members Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon thrashed up enough material for a two-LP set during protracted rehearsals at London’s Vanilla rehearsal space. After a relatively brisk setup surveying the album’s oft-arduous sessions with unpredictable producer Guy Stevens, Gray brings the narrative a grinding halt with 200 minutiae-filled pages devoted to the set’s individual tracks. No fact is deemed insignificant enough to be omitted, and no research is left unutilized, no matter how irrelevant or expendable. The book becomes mired in a series of digressions about such subjects as English rockabilly star Vince Taylor, American R&B rocker Bo Diddley and his eponymous beat, Jamaican “rude boy” songs, England’s Two-Tone ska-punk movement, the Spanish Civil War, Coca-Cola, actor Montgomery Clift, etc. While some of the material has a bearing on the record at hand, it is left unsifted. Worse, Gray ignores the relationship between the Clash’s original “Jimmy Jazz” and its inspiration “Staggerlee,” a provocative connection that goes unmentioned until a later passage about a quotation from the reggae cover “Wrong ’Em Boyo.” Like his track-by-track explication, a chapter devoted to the imagery and marketing of London Calling—with an emphasis on the package’s iconic photo of Simonon smashing his bass—and a painfully attenuated charting of the band’s later history bog down in a sump of unedited detail.

Bloated and unfocused—for die-hard Clash fanatics only.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-59376-293-3

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Review Posted Online: July 22, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2010

Categories:
Next book

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:
Next book

NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:
Close Quickview